NYCAASC 2018: Emergence Workshops

Orienting Complacency: Racial Hierarchies, Anti-Blackness and White Supremacy in Asian American Communities and History

GC 275, 11:45 - 1:10

How do we envision ourselves at the crossroads of identity: Of color? Queer? Immigrant? Asian? American? What does it mean to go from "Foreign" to "Asian-American"? How do we reckon with this identity in the face of a history of our histories with complacence and perpetuation of anti blackness? Please join Yellow Jackets Collective in a discussion and workshop on histories of racial hierarchy and intra/intercommunal violence. Here we will be exploring the ways in which Asian American "Inclusion" and "Assimilation" has historically (and continues) to work in relation to the continued oppression of Black and indigenous communities. We will be discussing methods of accountability and reviewing shared histories.

Yellow Jackets Collective

YJC is an intersectional collective of queer Yellow American femmes collaborating towards futures that center marginalized bodies.
We say Queer because we identify as queer. We refuse to invest in a future that privileges a binary system of classifications meant to contain and reduce the voluptuousness of identities that exist.
We say Intersectional because we believe that no person is free unless we are all free. This means that when we talk about race we talk about gender and class and geopolitics and privilege and sexuality and everything else. We focus on relational values and solidarity/affinity work because we refuse to assume that truth or productivity are ever absolute/unquestionable rather than socially constructed.
We say Yellow because we will not contribute to the erasure of those in the Asian diaspora that are not East Asian. We can only claim to speak for and represent our specific experiences as yellow femmes who grew up in white spaces in the US. The rest of the work for us is collaborative and affinity based, because our brown/non-yellow/non-US Asian fams, as well as the rest of our POC/queer fam, speak for themselves.
We say Collaborative because yellowness must support and speak on oppressions outside of our own, without taking credit for or leading in spaces that were created by and for specific identities other than our own. Especially those oppressions we have historically contributed to (antiblackness, transphobia, erasure of other Asian diasporic people, etc.) We need to be there to lift and to cherish and to receive similar gifts in return, but never to erase or takeover or silence.
We say Radical Futures because we use our creative powers to contribute to the construction of a future with POC/queers at the imaginative core. A radical future is only radical if POC/queers are the ones constructing it. We are tired of investing in anything other than a future that we will thrive in, that we are at the center of, that exists for our growth and love and pleasure.
We say Yellow again because at our most powerful we are a YELLOW PERIL and those who oppress us should be afraid. We are watching you. We are making moves.